It's been over 18 months since Valve shocked the PC game community by turning its popular multiplayer shooter Team Fortress 2 into a free-to-play game. Valve now makes money from the game via its Mann Co store, their in-game interface which allows both Valve and third parties to sell new weapons and cosmetic items for the game's players.

In a new interview at PC Gamer. Valve's Robin Walker, one of the original co-creators of Team Fortress, states, "The Mann Co store has now earned more than TF2 did via direct sales ... ". He did not give any specific revenue numbers but did admit that the top 10 creators of third party Team Fortress 2 items have now made at least "six figures" from their efforts.

Valve takes 75 percent of the sales of in-game items from third party makers. While that seems like a lot, Walker says that many creators are doing pretty well. He offers two examples:

The first is the 14 year old kid who got to present a $40,000 check to his parents. The second is a fellow who wanted to make models at a games company, but ended up having to do QA instead. So at nights he contributed models to TF2, and ended up earning more doing that than he did at his “official” games industry job.

Meanwhile, the official Team Fortress 2 page has announced that nine early Mann Co in-game hat items will no longer be sold in the store after January 24th.